How many seasons can LOST last (no spoilers, please!)?

Cafe Society
1

I say no spoilers, but anything that has happened through the 2/16 episode is unboxed and fair game. Same with the preview that aired after the 2/16 episode.

No other spoiler info please!

Now that we got that business out of the way, I wanted to pick up on something that pops up almost weekly in the Lost threads.

Someone will generally say that ABC is now trying to stretch Lost out so that it will last more than one season (discussing how little is revealed of the mystery).

I would think that ABC always anticipated that Lost, if successful, would last as long as people watched in substantial numbers.

But the question I have is how long can Lost stay fresh before viewers throw up their hands and say No Mas?

How many new ideas can they toss in to keep the viewer on the edge of his seat?

Can they crash a new crew of survivors in order to replenish fatalities?

Can they drag out the mysteries and subplots long enough to go on for years?

Will they eventually run out of interesting back stories?

Will elapsed real world time cause them to write a certain way (the kid who plays Walt’s age comes to mind)?

I figure that they can string us along for about three to four seasons, but I think they will have to introduce a major development that has not even yet been foreshadowed. I think if they want to stay strong the whole time, they can only go about two to three.

My fear is that the show will stay on too long and by the time that they reveal all, I will have checked out.

But I certainly think they have more than two seasons of ideas and stories.

What do you think?

2

Maybe four seasons without shaking things up a bit. However, if they decide to focus on other people on the island, they may be able to extend it. Maybe they will slowly introduce more characters that survived the crash., then make them cetral characters as the show goes on.

3

According to the producers (absolutely no plot or character spoilers follow, but better safe than sorry):

The creators have always planned for multiple seasons, and have planned for ways to give a little closure at about the half-season mark if they’re cancelled prematurely.

I’d say it depends on how artfully they reveal and extend the mysteries. At the rate they’re going, I expect something major by season’s end, and I’d say about three strong seasons in total. Then two anemic ones, and one awful one before it’s finally put out to pasture. :wink:

I hope they do have something in mind and stick to it (unlike X-Files, for example), and when it’s revealed, it’s revealed. They can introduce new complications, or re-tool the show to work without mystery (it can be done, the characters are strong enough). I’d also be surprised if they keep the Island Plot + Flashback format for every epsidoe into next season. Charlie’s second flashback was kind of weak. Some of those guys just don’t have much interesting happening to them.

I’ll start getting impatient if the season finale doesn’t threw us a bone with some meat on it. (It’s not an island! It’s a penninsula!)

4

Wow. A funny Simpsons reference from the last few seasons!

I’d like to see three strong seasons and then at worst one tacked on season.

I’d like to see the producers decide to end it with a bang than to milk it for all it is worth.

The Fugitive only lasted four seasons and ended with one of the highest rated episodes ever. Maybe we can get the same thing.

5

Well, nothing says that the characters we are watching now are the key players in this drama. I could see them doing another season of exactly the same time period, but from 12 brand-new points of view. Or overlapping new characters and old ones. We have 47 survivors, plus an unknown number of others on the island. Plenty to play with.

4 seasons, then a volcano explodes and kills them all, just as we were about to learn The Secret. :smiley:

6

I had an idea along those lines not too long ago. I was thinking that at the end of season one they could find the tail section of the plane, along with those survivors. Season two follows that group up to the meeting and season three goes from there.

Most viewers probably wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing, but I’d watch.

7

I like that idea but the one problem is… What do you do with the original cast? Those actors can’t just sit around for a year until they are needed again.

I could handle like the first two episodes of season two being about the tailenders and them meeting up with the originals.
I think the series has three seasons. After that it will without a doubt suck.

8

I give it 4 seasons:

Sir Aurthor Conan Doyles Lost World 1999-2002
Land of the Lost 1974-1977
Gilligans Island 1964-1967
That is the exact amount of time that survivors can survive on a deserted island (or whatever) before they run out of time travelers, ape people and Japanese soldiers who don’t know the war is over.

9

They can’t replay the timeline of the first season from a different perspective. They have to keep going forward.

What they COULD do is incorporate the new survivors and use the flashbacks…